One Taste - Slow Sex

Slow Sex

The New York Times portrays Daedone as leading a self-described "slow sex movement, one that places a near-exclusive emphasis on women’s pleasure — in which love, romance and even flirtation are not required." Daedone draws parallels between slow sex and the Slow Food movement associated with chef Alice Waters. With sex as with food, she says, people can overindulge without getting nourishment, or go from one extreme of consuming mindlessly to the other extreme of self-denial.

In an interview with San Francisco's 7x7 magazine, Daedone states that slow sex encompasses orgasmic meditation and mindful sexuality generally. She says that slow sex is not defined by speed or the amount of time spent, but rather these three ingredients: 1) developing attention to what's actually present rather than fixating on a goal, 2) simplicity, a stripping away of extraneous elements down to the level of pure sensation 3) cultivating desire by learning to acknowledge and articulate it.

In 2011, Daedone published Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm, described as elevating "the female orgasm to a level of religious and spiritual practice." The book intersperses practical exercises, anecdotes, and more detailed explanation of the characteristics of slow sex. In addition to an expanded description of the three-point definition above, the book charts some of the distinctive characteristics of slow sex, which values feeling good rather over looking good, desire over obligation, attention to sensation rather than fantasizing, and increasing sensation through attention rather than increasing sensation through pressure or speed.

The book begins by proposing that "every woman is orgasmic"—once the male-oriented definition of orgasm as "moment of climax" is expanded to include "the body's ability to receive and respond to pleasure" and even "a source of power, a well from which I could draw the energy I needed to discover who I was and how I wanted to live my life." Many of the staples of mainstream sexual self-help, including vibrators, fantasy and role playing, do not figure into slow sex.

A review in Salon.com explores whether these ideas and practices will appeal only to "alternative circles" or to a larger mainstream audience. Salon notes the demand for "female Viagra," with an estimated market of $2 billion dollars US, and numerous studies that document women's dissatisfaction with sex and low frequency of orgasm. The review concludes "Daedone's philosophy is a refreshing counterpoint to the porny mainstream, but it's certainly hard to picture Middle America embracing orgasmic meditation."

Barry Komisaruk, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University and author of The Science of Orgasm, was interviewed about slow sex for ABC news. Komisaruk characterizes the premises of slow sex as a kind of semantic reshuffling: "What Daedone calls orgasm is what most people would call pleasure and bliss; what most people call orgasm is what Daedone calls climax." However, Dr. Sara Gottfried, author of the book "The Hormone Cure" states "I consider OM a crucial addition to the language of female empowerment and experience. Perhaps most important, OM may be the best treatment available for our stress-crazed lives and overtaxed adrenal glands. It may just be the best possible hormone therapy for women of all ages."

Slow Sex presents a 10 day series of exercises consisting largely of timed 15-minute OM sessions, each with a different theme or focus, along with subsequent sharing of frames or sensations by both partners. The book asserts that the practice of slow sex is not offered as a solution to a problem, or a remedy for the pathologies of low libido or inability to experience orgasm. "Sex is not a problem… The whole paradigm of wrong, is wrong."